New Day,New Challenges,Different feelings

Memory: He Didn’t Know He Was Talking About Me?

I had an appointment with my mentor this morning about a possible change of major. It is finals week at school and of all four courses I took this semester, I did extremely poor in one. This has got to be the toughest course I have ever taken all my college life and I will end up with the worse grade I have ever had EVER in school. I can’t even tell you how bad but I am sure you can imagine, and because of this singular course, I am forced to have a rethink about what it is I really want to do or what career path I really want to follow.

I have considered repeating the course but I have also realized that the outcome would most likely be the same. I started out not having too much time for all my course work this semester trying to juggle work, school and a blog. I concluded that one had to go on the chopping blog and though my finances were tight, I decided it would be work, so I would have more time to study. I did just that and it didn’t seem to help at all. Failure is a very hard thing to acknowledge, but doing so allows for clarity on what the next action should be and so I am grateful that I have. Anyways, enough diversion already and back to the reason of the post.

This was my first semester at my new school and it was a great way to begin in a new environment (regardless of the “bad course”). Being the new kid on the blog, I was assigned a mentor whom I have met with at least four times throughout the semester. After the careful evaluation which led me to the decision that I may in fact need a change of major, I decided to talk to my mentor about it and find out his opinion about the two majors I was conflicted on.

I got to his office 15 minutes early before the appointment time and sat in front to wait for him. He came some twenty minutes later to find me in front of his office and asked if I was the lady who wanted to talk to him about my major. We went into his office and I explained my dilemma to him, to which he gave me very apt responses, careful enough to not lead me in any particular direction and stressing that it is my decision and he doesn’t want to sway me.

Towards the end of our talk, he tells me about a young girl whom he had just been assigned to mentor this semester and upon their first meeting, she told him how she transferred into the school and was in fact admitted into the nursing program to begin this fall, but switched career paths before classes even started. Her reason was that she had been contemplating for a long time if she could really be in the health field in that capacity because blood freaked her out. She discovered a new interest in computers and decided to try her hands at programming.

I am sitting there looking at him and saying to myself ” does he really mean he does’t remember that I was the one who told him that?”. For a moment I consider telling him he is talking about me but then decide against it and instead indulge him further. I acted surprised at the story he was telling me and he went on to tell me “he thought that was a stupid thing she did because so many people sit on waiting lists, with the hopes of getting into a nursing program somewhere and here she was throwing the chance away because of a problem that could be fixed”.

I let him go on and finish making his point, then tried to defend the “girl” in question, the whole time, reeling in shock that he doesn’t recognize “her”. We finished our little debate and I walked out. As I left, I kept wondering if he was pranking me and waiting for me to fall for it or if he genuinely didn’t remember I was the ” girl” who made the stupid decision to switch careers after getting into one of the toughest majors known to man.

If he was pranking me, I guess he fell for it himself but if he genuinely didn’t recognize he was reiterating my story to me, then what does that say of our memory, especially when it comes to remembering faces and matching names to those faces and what face said what? I do not hold him in any form of contempt because he is completely entitled to his opinion albeit the fact that it is regarding my life, which as a mentor, he owed it to me to be honest and open.

I know he has quite a handful of mentees but certainly, we can’t be that numerous that he wouldn’t remember us by name and not know which one of us said what. Surely, it can’t be a case of the “all black people look alike” syndrome now can it? If my story stood out or stayed with him, shouldn’t my face stay with him too especially since I met with him at least four times this semester.

I guess one reason I am quick to let it slide off is because I know I am not good with names or faces too. It is either I remember the name and not the face or recognize the face and not remember the name that goes with it. Many people have said this happens to them too but I think that is when you only meet the person once every so often. I am working on getting better with that because it can so embarrassing sometimes.

Memory must be fleeting then if my mentor couldn’t remember me after a whole semester. I hope he works at remembering his mentees names because I don’t think someone else would have been as forgiving as I was after his sort of insulting opinion. There are so many lessons I learned from that conversation with him which I would not go into so I don’t bore you with a very long read, but if you want to know, let’s indulge in the comment section.

Do tell, has this ever happened to you? That someone was talking about you in your presence and they didn’t know it? Or have you done that to somebody before? How did either experience feel? Please share. Hope you have been having a blessed, wonderful and amazing week so far. I have had exam stress but glad I am almost done.

Hi deb…I have considered putting in a request for a new mentor at school but it was pretty embarrassing. How have you been? .I had tried contacting you one time and not sure if you saw in my comment section but I couldn’t find your blog all of a sudden. Happy holidays and hope you are having the best of it.